Red Wings Rumblings
It’s another 4 Nations Face-Off day for the NHL, but now the tournament swings from Montreal to Boston.
Saturday was a great day for the NHL with this tournament. Both games were highly entertaining and provided some of the best (and worst if you’re Jordan Binnington) the league has to offer. It started with Finland upsetting Sweden in OT — tough loss for the Swedes, who were favored in the competition, but Finland gutted it out. Lucas Raymond notched a single assist and a couple of SOG in 18:30 of ice time. Finland has a chance to make the final tonight.
Then there was the main event — USA vs Canada. Absolute cinema to start the game with several fights right off the opening face off. The Tkachuk brothers were the two who seemed to have “planned” a couple of the fights, which is a little lame but overall it made for great entertainment.I will say that once the third fight broke out, I was starting to get a little annoyed and just wanted the two teams to play the damn game. Connor McDavid opened the scoring at the 5:31 mark of the first period, and after that it’s was all Team USA — scoring three unanswered goals including the GWG from Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin.
Larkin would later pick up an assist on Jake Guentzel’s empty-net goal. Larkin earned second start of the game. Larkin spoke about the game with media, and it’s pretty clear this was a big moment for him, as it should be. It’s certainly one of the biggest goals so far in his career, and hopefully he’s got plenty more in him while wearing the Winged Wheel.
USA plays tonight against Sweden, but there’s not much on the line other than potentially going undefeated and bringing in a win in front of a home crowd. Still, it’ll be Dylan Larkin vs Lucas Raymond. All of tonight’s games are must-win for every team other than USA.
NHL dot com did a whole feature article on Lucas Raymond recently, you can read that here. It’s a good write-up, shows how much the guy cares about becoming a better player and what it means to be representing his country.
Back to real life — the Red Wings will play hockey this week! They will host back-to-back games at LCA Saturday and Sunday against the Minnesota Wild and Anaheim Ducks. Detroit will return to action in the thick of the playoff race, but they have quite a difficult schedule ahead of them. Not gonna be easy, but I think everyone should feel good about the state of this team right now.
